


Jog on, jog on!

by DameOfNoDelicacy



Category: Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare, Winter's Tale - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Crossover, Drabble, Gen, Probably technically a little too long for drabble though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:04:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5447552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameOfNoDelicacy/pseuds/DameOfNoDelicacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Mercutio had survived his duel, and had fled to Bohemia? As in, the Bohemia from The Winter's Tale.</p><p>And what if he just happened to meet a certain snapper-up of unconsidered trifles along the way?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jog on, jog on!

**Author's Note:**

> My first attempt at writing something... eh, I dunno, "fun?" I always want to make Mercutio this incredibly tragic figure, though, so I have no idea how well it went. Sigh.
> 
> Mainly, I love Mercutio, and I love Autolycus, so I decided to stick them in the same world for a few pages and see what happened. Enjoy :)

He sure was getting tired of all this walking. He’d been walking for – how long now, a week? Maybe. Mercutio had left Verona on a Tuesday, and it had taken him until the Friday to secure passage out of Italy, he was sure of that much, but he’d lost track of time once he’d boarded the ship and sailed off to god-knows-where. “Bohemia,” the captain had told him when he’d asked. Mercutio had said “Hmm,” and had proceeded to trudge belowdecks, his rucksack on his back and a scowl on his face.

He had tried to keep track of the days when the ship first set sail, but that had proved a more difficult task than he’d anticipated. Mercutio had never been on a ship before, and he’d spent nearly the entire journey huddled on his tiny cot, arms wrapped around himself and eyes squeezed shut tight as he tried hour after agonizing hour not to lose the contents of his stomach. Mostly, he’d been successful.

Mercutio grimaced. Being stabbed by Tybalt had been a more enjoyable experience than that stupid sea voyage.

The relief Mercutio had felt when the captain announced that they’d docked in Bohemia had been extraordinary. Mercutio had shouted a quick “Thank you!” to the captain over his shoulder as he sprinted down the deck, eager to have his feet on solid ground again, and once he’d disembarked, he’d gulped lungful after lungful of the fresh, sweet Bohemian air (which, if Mercutio was totally honest, still tasted a bit too much like salt for his liking).

Mercutio hadn’t had a plan, exactly. He’d looked around the little Bohemian port, had seen the people coming and going and carrying out their business with intention and purpose, and he’d realized that he had nothing, literally nothing, to do. He had no duties, no responsibilities, no obligations. No princes to attend to. No fights to start. No parties to attend. Nothing. _No life at all_ . He was free. For the first time since… _Aw, jeez, I dunno, since I was literally, actually born?_... Mercutio was free.

So, Mercutio, grinning like an idiot, had bought a few apples, a hunk of cheese, and a few round, hard biscuits, and he’d started walking.

And walking.

And walking.

And…

walking.

To say that it had been fun at first would probably be an overstatement, Mercutio reflected now, as he trudged along the country road. Oh, sure, he’d had time to think, and to daydream, and to sort out his feelings about the business in Verona (he hoped Romeo was all right, given how quickly he and Juliet had seemed to be moving forward), but Mercutio had realized almost immediately that he missed having someone to talk to. He’d started singing to himself, but it wasn’t the same.

And goddammit, Mercutio’s feet hurt.

He was about to plop down on the side of the road for a bit, more for variety’s sake than anything else, when he heard something rustling off to the left. He paused. He squinted at the bushes. He could have sworn –

And then a man burst out of the foliage, looking around wildly and seeming to cling to his shabby hat for dear life. “Ohhh!” cried the man, who began to stumble around in little circles, “Ohhh!”

Mercutio eyed him warily. “Um,” he said. “Um. Can I – can I help – ?” but then the man flopped to the ground and let out a cry so loud that Mercutio’s words were completely lost underneath it.

The man cocked his head to the side and stared up at Mercutio from where he lay in the dirt. “Ohhh,” he said again, “that ever I was born!”

Mercutio blinked. “Um,” he said again. “Really?”

“Yes, _really!_ ” exclaimed the man on the ground, who appeared to be less than thrilled by Mercutio’s lackluster response. “Really! Pluck but off these rags, and then death! Death!”

Well. That was different. The man had piqued Mercutio’s interest, at the very least. “What do you mean, ‘death,’ poor fellow?” inquired Mercutio, taking a step closer.

“I mean,” replied the man, “that I have nigh on nothing to live for anymore, good sir, nigh on nothing! I have been _robbed_ , you see. Yes, _robbed!_ ”

“Are there robbers in these parts?” asked Mercutio. “Because I haven’t seen – ”

“YES, there are robbers in these parts, sweet sir! Of _course_ there are robbers in these parts! I was _robbed_ by one, wasn’t I?”

“I suppose…”

“I was! I was! Oh, my sweet, sweet sir, it was dreadful! I was robbed – ”

(“Yes, I’d got that part,” muttered Mercutio.)

“ – and beaten! And my money and apparel were taken from me, and I was put into these detestable vestments!” The man gestured to his threadbare coat and patched trousers. He sat bolt upright, and then winced dramatically. “And what’s more,” he said, putting a hand to his right shoulder and rubbing it in a somewhat exaggerated fashion, “I fear my shoulder-blade is out.” When Mercutio only continued to stare at him, he bit his lip, looked left and right briefly, and said “Ow!”

“Your shoulder looks fairly fine to me,” observed Mercutio, but even so, he knelt beside the strange man and placed his hands on his shoulder. “Let’s see,” he said, and started to push against it, but then the man fell sideways and began to grab haphazardly at Mercutio, flinging his hands about in all directions. “What the – what are you – _ah!_ Jesus, watch it!” Mercutio exclaimed when one of the man’s hands thwacked him across the nose.

“I fear you cannot help me!” wailed the man. “I fear I am too far gone already!”

“I _fear_ I might punch your lights out if you don’t stop flailing like an absolute moron,” Mercutio grumbled, but then the man’s head slammed against Mercutio’s breastbone, and Mercutio fell backwards and found himself scrabbling madly to get the man’s limbs away from his face.

Abruptly, the man stopped moving. He sat up. He sucked in his hollow cheeks. He turned to glance at Mercutio, and he said, “You know what? I think I’m quite all right now, actually.”

“I’m sorry, _what?_ ” gasped Mercutio. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Yes, well, that’s the way of the world, isn’t it?” said the man, jumping to his feet and shaking out his arms. “Yes, yes, yes, feeling right peachy now, I think!” He did a brief little jig to prove it. “Well. Thanks for your service, sweet sir. I’d best be off now!” And with that, he turned on his heel and began to stroll down the road.

Mercutio frowned. Something didn’t add up. _Robbers in these parts, eh?_ Keeping the bizarre stranger in his sights, Mercutio felt around for his purse. When he discovered it missing, Mercutio didn’t feel even the slightest hint of surprise. _Robbers indeed_ , he thought, and he picked himself up and began to sprint down the road, closing quickly in on the man.

The man heard him coming, and he turned, and he grinned, and he started to say “Why, sweet sir, you’ve – ” and then Mercutio tackled him.

“Give me back my purse, you thieving bastard!” shouted Mercutio.

“Your purse?” asked the man, all wide eyes and innocence. “What purse?”

“Don’t even try,” Mercutio shot back, jamming his hands into the pockets of the man’s shabby coat. “Aha!” he exclaimed, yanking his purse free and hoisting it high in the air. “I knew you’d stolen it!”

“Please don’t hurt me, sir,” whimpered the man. “Please. I – I don’t see why we can’t be friends!”

“Friends?” repeated Mercutio. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“Well. Seeing as you don’t have any other friends here and all, I thought it might – ”

“Hang on,” interrupted Mercutio, “hang on. How do you know I haven’t got any friends?”

“You made that abundantly clear when you were talking to yourself,” said the man, a victorious gleam coming into his eye. “You’re new to these parts. Betcha you don’t even know the name of the king of Bohemia.”

“I do so,” said Mercutio, reaching far, far back into his memories of boyhood lessons in politics. “It’s – um. Give me a second, it’s – starts with a ‘P,’ doesn’t it? Poly – King Poly – Poli-something…”

“Thought not,” said the man. “Look. I have absolutely no idea why, but I’m inclined to like you. And I also know, from having eavesdropped on several of your very interesting but very one-sided conversations, that you’ve got nowhere to go. So. Why don’t you jog on with me for just a bit, eh? Keep me company? What do you say?”

Mercutio gaped at him. “You just tried to steal my purse, and now you want to be my friend?”

“We’re not so different, you and I,” the man continued. “We’re both clever, aren’t we?”

“Well. One of us is, anyway."

The man ignored that. “We both mainly speak in prose, not poetry, yes?”

“Sorry?”

“Prose. Ya know, none of that da- _dum-_ da- _dum_ -da- _dum_ -da- _dum_ -da- _dum_ nonsense. That nonsense is poetry. What we mostly talk - actual sentences and stuff - that's prose.“

“I’m not sure I quite – I'm not sure that's _true_ , actually, I - "

“All right, then, I’ll give you one more argument, and then I’ll leave it be, how’s that?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Here we go. We’re in Act Four now, you understand?”

“…no, actually. I don’t.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Ohhhh-kay. Look. When you were talking to yourself, you said you’d had a fight with some longtime friend, or ex-lover or somesuch, yes? Swords and _passados_ and all that? Yes? Yes. And he stabbed you, and then you yelled some stuff, and then you stumbled offstage, yes? Yes. Yes again. And all of that was in Act Three. But now…” he paused for effect. “Now, we’re in Act Four! And anything can happen in Act Four!”

“Act Four?” Mercutio repeated dumbly.

“Yep! Act Four! Doesn’t matter what the genre of the first three acts was, either – Act Four can turn that right around by changing up the setting and subverting established themes and introducing new characters and all sorts of things! And Act Four of this play is great fun, let me tell you.”

“Let me get this straight,” said Mercutio, staring the strange man dead in the face. “You claim that I had an offstage death in Act Three, and now, because it’s Act Four and you and I both primarily speak in prose rather than poetry, we should be friends? And also, I should just… ignore the fact that you tried to nick my purse?”

The strange man grinned. “Yep!”

Mercutio looked at the road. He looked at where he’d come from, miles and miles away, and he looked at where he was going – _probably miles and miles away in that direction, too_. He looked at the strange man, who was still sporting that dopey grin. “Well…” he said, steeling himself a little bit, “what do I have to lose?”

“Good show, good show!” yelped the strange man. “Good show! Pun fully intended! Because that’s something else you and I both do – we make puns! Oh, this is going to be fan- _tas-_ tic! Say – do you sing, friend?”

“Sing?” said Mercutio. “Well. A little.”

“Something along the lines of a brief ditty somewhere in Act Two, I imagine,” the man mused. “No matter! I shall teach you a song, friend, and we’ll sing it as we tramp along the road! How’s that sound?”

“Just fine,” said Mercutio, who found himself beginning to smile a little. “Say – if we’re going to be friends, then don’t you think I should know your name?”

“Ah! But of course!” The man swept his hat off his head and bowed deeply. “I was littered under Mercury – another similarity between the two of us, perhaps, hmm? – and he was, just as I am, a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. Thus, did my father name me: Autolycus!”

“Autolycus,” repeated Mercutio, bowing in return. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m called Mercutio.”

“Delightful!” proclaimed Autolycus, straightening and slapping his hat back on his head. “Delightful, friend Mercutio – for both ‘friend’ and ‘Mercutio’ you are indeed! Onwards, then! To the sheep-shearing! Come along – down the road.” And they began to walk.

“Oh – and I shall teach you that song,” said Autolycus, excitedly, and Mercutio couldn’t help but grin in return. Autolycus cleared his throat. “It goes like this: _Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way…”_  


End file.
